Custom Invitations for a Fun Group of Friends

This project is by far one of my all-time favorites: a design for custom party invitations, which included original watercolor illustrations I made special to convey a spooky, but still cute, theme for a Halloween Bunco party (Bunco is a popular social dice game). Every year, Padie (my mom), along with the other women in her Bunco group, each host a Bunco party during one particular month. Padie selected October and asked me early in the year if I would work with her to come up with custom party invitations that would not only portray the spooky fun to be had at her Halloween Bunco party and inspire her friends to attend in costume, but also, give everyone a story to remember as part of the custom party invitations experience.

We started brainstorming ideas, and it was clear right away that furry and feathered woodland creatures would need to be front and center in the design. Armed with the notes from our meetings, I started sketching characters and researching animals I could work into my drawings. After coming up with several rough pencil sketches of various woodland animals in Halloween costumes and the like, I settled on the cast of characters featured here: a squirrel, a rabbit, a deer and an owl. The final pencil drawings complete, I then got to work painting each character in watercolor shades that fit the fall theme. I painted a nighttime background, too, so that our woodland trick-or-treaters would appear on the invitation as part of a finished Halloween scene. After everything was scanned and printed, I printed out another copy of the three main characters, carefully cutting and affixing them by hand to the printed background (using foam squares). This pop-up technique makes these custom party invitations stand WAY out!

Two things I loved about grade school: Valentine’s Day and books. Even now, when someone mentions Valentine’s Day, my mind immediately goes to childhood days gone by, where I traded paper valentines with classmates, each of us filling one another’s decorated Valentine’s Day boxes with an assortment of handwritten cards. In much the same way, I looked forward to the monthly book orders and annual book fairs at my school. When the order forms for new Scholastic Reading Club books came in, I pored over the selection and carefully chose the titles that sounded the most interesting to me. It was always exciting when the books arrived and we got to take them home. Receiving and giving valentines and books were favorite parts of my childhood, and the memories attached to these things remain very special to me today.

And so, Valentine’s Day is here again already. As I recently discovered, February 14 also marks International Book Giving Day. Pairing these holidays makes a great deal of sense. Valentine’s Day traditionally being a day for showing others we care, our collective mindset is primed for opening our hearts, spreading joy and giving gifts. This is where Book Giving Day finds a warm welcome, with its mission to “get books into the hands of as many children as possible.” This means both new and gently used books are fair game—anything that will benefit a child.

There are a number of ways to get involved on Book Giving Day, many of which you can find at bookgivingday.com. Inspired by their list, here are several good ideas:

Donate books to a library, where they can be shelved or sold to raise funds for other books.

Donate books to a medical office or other such place with a waiting room (e.g., a car dealership, hair salon or spa).

Give books to/trade books with the children of family and friends (e.g., books that your children have outgrown).

Attach a book plate to any book you donate/give/trade that asks the recipient to read the book and then pass it along to another reader.

Start planning your own 2016 book-raiser! Check out Milk+Bookies, a non-profit organization that helps plan events for collecting books in the U.S. and Canada, for more information on hosting one of these.

As we enter this day of cards, candy and flowers, consider also the simple gesture of passing along a book. Much like that paper valentine received from a classmate, one book has the potential power to make a young person feel special and valued. And if this were to help instill a love and appreciation for reading that lasts a lifetime, I would say that Valentine’s Day just got a whole lot sweeter!